I have just spent 4 solid days of hell getting my TP-Link TL-WR1043ND (v1.8) router to work as a wireless, (and wired) repeater. Consequently, I decided to document it all here to spare others from this rather unpleasant process.

Firstly, don't bother looking at all the other wireless repeater postings for the Atheros / TP-Link TL-WR1043ND in these or any other forums. They are all wrong in at least one part. Refer to the instructions below: (These were gleaned from various places with a large chunk taken from here)

6. You should be asked to change your password and username. Carefully type these in. If you aren't asked for a password and username, do a hard reset, this time doing it properly! Hit change password.

7. Go FIRST to "Wireless" => "Wireless Security" and enter the security type and key that matches your primary router. (You must use WEP or WPA2-AES to have DD-WRT work reliably. (mine works on WPA-TKIP?)

To be frank the word "simple" is bandied about a lot in the various forums and in my experience is misleading. The concept is certainly "simple" but the practical application with disparate makes and models of routers certainly isn't.

FYI: during my 4 days of "Hell" I tried various WDS repeaters using 4 different distros, DD-WRT, TP-Link, Open-WRT and Gargoyle all without a satisfactory result.

The configuration steps outlined in the original posting make no assumptions about the distro installed on "Unit 1". I agree that if both units are flashed with DD-WRT, (especially if they are identical hardware platforms), then your approach would probably work "out-of-the-box". I should clarify that I was looking for a repeater solution that would work with almost any pre-installed access point, ie. a genuinely "portable" solution.

WDS bridges works best with identical hardware platforms. For a generic wireless bridge connecting to any access points, I get best results with Broadcom based routers. It's also very simple, just connect to an AP with client bridge mode.

Yep thats absolutely true, and I lost count of the number of times I thought if only I had purchased a Broadcom based router... However, I had an Atheros based unit and this post was intended for all those poor souls who also had one, in particular the otherwise rather good value for money, TP-Link TL-WR1043ND.

Great post, I had a quite few days of hell as well to get the 1043ND working as a repeater.

Now I can use this guide as reference instead of having to look at a certain youtube video that is actually meant for broadcom based routers since I don't memorize the steps. (I followed only some of the steps of course since it's not meant for Atheros)

This writes a "1" into the proxy_arp file for the bridge "br0", instructing it to pass all ARP requests through the bridge. This should allow DHCP requests etc to pass through transparently. You can read more about it here

Note: I also added this as a startup command in DD-WRT so that it was run automatically everytime the router was rebooted or powered up.

Quote:

On a side note, how well is the WR1043ND working as repeater for you?

It worked flawlessly for a week then I changed the client's SSID and somehow broke it It hasn't worked since, so I'm about to trial a WRT54GL.

I even flashed it back to the original firmware and started from scratch, but it never recovered. I did however get it working by setting it up in Client mode with a Virtual AP running its own DHCP server. This worked well for a day or so and then once again I changed something and broke it.

Let me know how you get on... I have a new TL1043ND here that I can't use

WRT54GL UPDATE:
The WRT54GL worked perfectly with the latest version of DD-WRT generic Broadcom, (8th May 2011) configured as a Repeater-Bridge with a Virtual AP on the client side, (diferent SSID).

After more than two months trying with a lot of post for making working the 1043nd as a repeater, this is the most descriptive I found, but I tried it a lot of times, all the steps are fine but I can't have it working. I really don't know why.

Maybe is because of the router I'm trying to connect to that is impossible, but I'm new in this and I don't know, maybe you can help me...

I'm trying to connect with the TL-1043ND to a Thomson Speedtouch 580 (the one from the phone company, without dd-wrt), the connection is with WEP, and I'm trying to repeat without pass (I don't mind)

All the steps are working ok but I never see the Virtual wifi created and if I go also to Status-> Wireless, I only see the data that I put (The channel where is working is continiously changing, I can't put channel fixed to the one of the wifi I want to repeat)
The signal arrives to the 1043nd around 26 of signal using the Viviz survey, with other usb wifi card I connect without problems.

Does anyone knows where I'm making the mistake? or maybe is impossible what I'm trying?

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